Christianity in its ideas was never the art of the possible.
BARBARA TUCHMANFateful moments tend to evoke grandeur of speech, especially in French.
More Barbara Tuchman Quotes
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To put away one’s own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
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The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.
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In the midst of events there is no perspective.
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Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others – only to lose it over themselves.
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Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled.
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To gain victory over the flesh was the purpose of fasting and celibacy, which denied the pleasures of this world for the sake of reward in the next.
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The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.
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The power to command frequently causes failure to think.
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Completeness is rare in history.
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The Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight.
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The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources.
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For me, the card catalog has been a companion all my working life. To leave it is like leaving the house one was brought up in.
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Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.
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The Hundred Years’ War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
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Books are humanity in print.
BARBARA TUCHMAN